I spotted a leaflet for an open call for ‘ASTEROID’ magazine and I found it appealing because I’ve been wanting to do a space-themed photoshoot because I love the wacky visuals and scenes you can create, and it would be a fun shoot to collaborate with others on. The inspiration they posted for this open call is something that would appeal to me if I saw it in a magazine or a gallery and I wanted to create something similar.
An added requirement is to use sustainably sourced clothing such as thrifted items or made by fashion students. Also androgynous models are preferred. Using sustainably sourced garments has made it easier in terms as flexibilty for throwing spacey items together to explore a quirky style. I’m more than happy to use an androgynous model, especially considering the theme, as space and sci-fi often feature androgynous folk, and bend gender stereotypes; like Ziggy Stardust or the genderless J’naii race in Star Trek. As a queer artist, I enjoy messing with gender presentation and photographing it.
As a photographer, the image and meaning of the image itself is priority for me, but for this I must also consider the fashion aspect of this, because ‘ASTEROID’ is a fashion & art magazine. To me this means a commericial aspect to how I should intend my work to be seen; as even though it is art, fashion is often about selling a garment, and to a furthur extent a desirable lifestyle.
visual inspiration
I had planned to use an androgynous friend as a model and play with makeup and fabrics/props/clothes to create an outer space look inspired by my visual research and experiment with kitsch or dry natural environment (long dry yellow grass) locations. I had planned to experiment with collage elements in post-production.
However due to the nationwide lockdown and social distancing measures, I ended up using myself as a model and creating collaged scenes using old and new photographs, original and sourced material in Adobe Photoshop.
Photoshoot for ASTEROID
I used stuff I had available to me to make the spaciest outfit I could: Star Wars sweatshirt, neon string, sunglasses and a notebook made out of recycled circuit boards. It was odd to shoot myself in weird positions as if I were in space but I tried to have fun with it. I photographed a round mirror, a small painting I did, and the fatty grease floating around a frying pan I’d left to soak.
As a different model I used an unused portrait from my Studio Portrait Module, and shots of buildings from my Darkroom Module. I also sourced images labelled for reuse on the internet. I used all these elements to experiment with creating collaged outer-space scenes in Photoshop. I was mostly just playing at first, but I narrowed the refined the compositions and used my visual research to mix the textures and colours of images used to match that retro collage aesthetic.
oliverclarkephotoppp1 